True story of the conquest of New Spain

The True History of the Conquest of New Spain is a work by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was one of the soldiers who participated in most of the the conquest of Mexico in the 16th century.

Description and analysis of the work

Díaz del Castillo's biographers agree that 1568 was the date the manuscript was completed. A handwritten copy arrived in Spain in 1575 (7 years later) (in the XVI century handwritten circulation of works was common), which served as the basis for the first printed edition, which was published posthumously in 1632; there are two different editions of it, in which the year 1632 appears on the cover, but only one was printed "truly" in that year, although with two status variants (not edition); the second is a counterfeit or counterfeit edition imitating the first state variant and was made in the late 17th or early 18th century, although many still consider it a first edition.

The authentic first has a chalcographic title page by Juan de Courbes and its two variants or states, based on the exhaustive typo-bibliographical study by Carlos Fernández González, are distinguished by the fact that one account has a final chapter that the other does not have and corrects two typographical errors (in the signature Ii3 and in the year of the marginal apostille on f. 251v), as well as various other features.

It is a work of captivating style from the first lines. It narrates the process of the conquest of Mexico in a rude way, although simple, agile and direct. Each page is a picturesque portrait full of details. Reading his book is being transported to the past and living by the side of a soldier all the events of the conquest: descriptions of places, stories of characters, anecdotes, sharp criticism and distressing reports of fatigue and dangers faced.

Each of the two hundred and fourteen chapters become an experience for the reader. As a sign of the simplicity of his style, Bernal narrates an astonishing fragment from when the Spaniards first entered Mexico City:

"Then another day we left Estapalapa, very accompanied by (...) big caciques, we went through our way forward, which is wide of eight steps, and goes so right to the city of Mexico, that it seems to me that it was not twisted little or much, and since it is well wide all was filled with those people that did not fit, some that entered Mexico and others that were going out, and the Indians that came to us (...)

If we are interested in knowing what Moctezuma ate, we can turn to True History:

"In eating, they had their cooks on thirty ways of stews, made in their way and usanza and teniánlos placed in braseros of clay boys under them, because they cooled, and from that which Moctezuma had to eat peased more than three hundred dishes (...) they guided him daily chickens, roosters of papada, faisanes, perdices of land, codornics, pats (...)

His work also offers information about the confrontations between Indians and Spanish soldiers in the midst of the conquest:

"...every day our forces were minced and that of the Mexicans grew, and we saw many of our dead and all the others wounded, and though we fought very much as men we could not withdraw, nor that the many squadrons that day and night gave us war, and the powdered gunpowder, and the food and water therefore we saw the death in our eyes,

On Michoacán, Díaz del Castillo plays Olid and on the trial over the Cazonci filed by Nuño de Guzmán.

However, it was not precisely the fact of publicizing the exploits of the Spaniards in an adventure book that motivated him to write his True history of the conquest of New Spain , forty years later. The real motive was never feeling well rewarded in prizes (land and Indians) and rewards for his multiple merits. The True History of him is an excessive list of merits in the conquest of New Spain. It emphasizes the little glory that Hernán Cortés left to the soldiers, architects of the conquest.

It is common to find in the True History comments on the royal chronicler Francisco López de Gómara and his General History of the Indies. Bernal accuses him of speaking to the taste of his palate, praising Cortés, keeping silent and covering up the exploits of the soldiers. His argument was that stories were written by those who were not present in New Spain and had no relation to what really happened. In this regard, our chronicler writes:

«... While writing in this my chronicle, I saw what Gómara and Illiescas and Jovio wrote in the conquests of Mexico and New Spain and since I read and understood them (...) and these my words so grotesque and without a cousin, I stopped writing in it, and being present so good stories and with this thought I read and look very well at the talks and reasons that they say in their stories and from the beginning and from the beginning...

After Mexico City-Tenochtitlan fell, Bernal Díaz went to live in Coatzacoalcos. In 1541 (when the city of Valladolid, today Morelia) was founded, he decided to go to Santiago de Guatemala, where he died in 1584, when he was over eighty-four years old.

With the above mentioned, we can answer our initial question: Díaz del Castillo wrote the "True History" as proof of his services to the Crown, in order to demand rewards. It was a response to the chronicles that exalted Cortés giving him all the glory, reducing the effort of the Spanish soldier to nothing.

Modern criticism of the work

However, Bernal is not without his critics. W. Arens, author of the book The Myth of the Man-Eater, keeps reminding us that he never took notes and never learned to speak the indigenous languages, and yet he is able to describe to us entire dialogues of the indigenous people from the first day they set foot on the continent. However, as Bernal wrote it, he knew the indigenous language of Cuba, and the conquest was made with the almost constant presence of "lenguas" ("lenguas"). who translated the local languages, in addition to using the universal language of the hands. Some of these dialogues bear a great resemblance to passages from the adventures of Hans Staden, a very popular book at the time, which recounts the hardships of a German mercenary on the Atlantic coast of Brazil around 1550. Some of his stories contrast with the indigenous versions, and others, such as his description of the tzompantli of the Templo Mayor, are physically impossible. Bernal reports having counted 100,000 skulls, but the tzompantli reconstructions do not fit more than 1,800.

Christian Duverger, a French anthropologist who has specialized in the history of Mesoamerica, goes further in his book published in 2012, Crónica de la eternidad, attributing the authorship of Bernal Díaz's work to himself. conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés. However, Duverger's thesis has been refuted, among others, by the Spanish academic Guillermo Serés, who defends Bernal Díaz's authorship of the work that has always been attributed to him.

Online Edition

• True history of the conquest of the New-Spain, full and facsimile text of the first edition in high definition, in One More Library.